The Bad Boys Of The ‘70s season continued into its third and final weekend at Auckland’s Academy Cinemas, and provided a film I’ve never seen despite its soundtrack being a cornerstone of my record collection for more than half my life.
I’ve never rushed to see this film because I’d never heard anything particularly encouraging about it. A film should be given a chance, I always think, and it’s been my intention to get around to it sooner or later. In this case though, the rumours are true. It’s pretty weak. It’s not in the same low league as ROLLERBALL, another terrible Bad Boys Of The ‘70s first watch, but it was still a disappointment.
Richard Roundtree plays John Shaft, a private detective who seemingly knows every motherfucker in Harlem. I’ve seen Roundtree in subsequent roles and he always gives a strong, if sometimes flat, performance. Here, he’s terrible. It doesn’t help that the overly-ripe dialogue is some of the worst screenwriting I’ve experienced in quite some time.
If the writing is poor, the direction is just as bad. Certain things happen in the film that either don’t make sense, or just don’t pay off for the amount of screen time they take to set up. There’s an admittedly great great sequence where Shaft moonlights as a bartender just so he can speak to two men he suspects are staking out his apartment across the street. He gives them free drinks, and gets talking to them. But it leads nowhere. You think he might be plying them with free booze so their senses are dulled for the inevitable fist fight, but he just calls his detective friend and two patrolman are dispatched to arrest them. A great sequence, but one that just doesn’t make too much sense. As they obviously were unaware of what Shaft looked like, he could have just sat next to them at the bar and reached the same conclusion.
Another oddity is in the final sequence where Shaft abseils through an hotel room window. We see quite a bit of set-up where he makes a home-made flare and sets fire to it, but despite throwing this through the window first, it has very little effect on the sequence. Just another dead end.
We’re not here for the dialogue though. We’re here to hear Isaac Hayes’ soundtrack score pumping out of a cinema sound system. And I can confirm it sounds bloody fabulous. Great too to finally hear a soundtrack I know so well but in its original context.
The shady side of New York looks fantastic too. Harlem, Times Square, and a heap of cinema marquees. Just beautiful.
Hit: Theme From Shaft
Hidden Gem: Walk From Reggio’s
Vinyl Stylus 